It all started with a T-shirt. Young New Yorkers often emblazon shirts with fashion statements such as 'sexy' or 'porn star', but this one was different. It read: 'Jewcy'.

Now the Jewcy slogan has become a cultural icon and a brand name on its own. The jewcy.com website promotes Jewish theatre and clubbing nights and has been at the forefront of a reinvention of Jewish identity by young US Jews.

This generation has thrown off the old stereotypes of Jewish America, with its concentration on the family and the synagogue. Out go bagels, Woody Allen-style neuroses and yiddish. In come clubbing, dance music, radical Jewish magazines and new Jewish fiction.

'It is a kind of Jewish Pride,' said Jon Steingart, who co-founded the Jewcy label as a joke. 'I think we just tapped into the zeitgeist of what was going on with young people. We just applied Jewishness to having a young, hip style and it took off.'

Potshots are taken at all aspects of Jewish culture,. Jewcy's best-selling T-shirt reads: 'Shalom motherfucker'. 'It is flying off the shelves,' said Steingart.

Last week style bible Time Out New York devoted its cover story to the new image under the headline 'The New SuperJews', with a photograph of Jewish actor Adam Goldberg ripping open his shirt to reveal a Superman suit. The magazine profiled 10 Jewish-Americans who were reinventing their culture in cutting edge fields.

Goldberg, a star of Saving Private Ryan and A Beautiful Mind, tops the list in the film world with his lead role in the controversial movie The Hebrew Hammer. The film is a spoof of 'Blaxploitation' movies of the Seventies. But instead of a wise-cracking black detective, Goldberg plays a super-cool Jewish private eye who drives a Cadillac painted in the colours of the Israeli flag. Director Jonathan Kesselman dubbed it the world's first 'Jewsploitation' movie.

'It shows Jews can make movies about being Jewish that aren't The Pianist or neurotic relationship movies,' one critic wrote. The Hammer follows other hit films that have used Jewish characters to explore previously taboo subjects, such as Kissing Jessica Stein (a Jewish lesbian) and The Believer (a Jewish Nazi).

Meanwhile, US bookshelves are bulging with new-generation Jewish fiction such as Myla Goldberg's Bee Season and Gary Shteyngart's The Russian Debutante's Handbook . But, unlike previous Jewish bestsellers, these books have characters who revel in their Jewishness rather than shun it.

The Jewish influence in youth music is becoming huge. It ranges from popular Jewish rappers such as the Hip Hop Hoodios, whose music is winning black Americans fans, to the many Jews prominent on rap record labels, such as Lyor Cohen of Def Jam or Eminem's manager Paul Rosenberg.

But the vanguard of young Jewish America is a trend-setting magazine, Heeb, an old yiddish insult for a Jew. Started by Jewish writer Jennifer Bleyer, Heeb now sells nationwide. Its content is an irreverent mix of every aspect of Jewish culture. Its last issue contained features on 'Sexy Israeli expats' and an obituary of German film-maker Leni Riefenstahl that concluded: 'You are Heeb's new favourite dead Nazi-lover.'

The magazine has come to symbolise a generation gap. Previous generations of Jews sought to succeed by integrating into mainstream American culture, while young Jews now are celebrating their identity. 'I feel we are reporting on something that is larger than us. We are an antidote to stuffy older ways of doing things. People like our iconoclasm,' said Heeb editor Josh Neuman.

Experts agree. 'Young Jews are ... telling the previous generation they made a mistake. You should not give up your identity. You should celebrate it,' said Professor William Helmsreich, an expert in ethnic relations at City University of New York.

The irreverence has caused outrage among some Orthodox Jewish groups. At one recent Jewish parade in New York, Steingart and other Jewcy staffers were abused by a group of Orthodox Jews. 'They thought we could not be Jews because no Jew would wear T-shirts like ours,' he said.

The rise of Jewish pride comes when there are fears of a growth of anti-Semitism in America. Over the past 30 days there have been eight serious anti-Jewish crimes in Brooklyn, where many Jewish New Yorkers live. They have ranged from swastikas daubed on houses to vandalism against Jewish centres and a synagogue.

However, such attacks are unlikely to hit the new Jewish identity. Alvy Singer, Allen's tortured alter ego in Annie Hall, would be shocked: in America, it is now hip to be a Jew.